A Winona man admitted Thursday that he used social media apps to sexually extort dozens of girls — many of them preteens — across the country and abroad.
Valentin Silva Quintana, 30, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count each of producing, distributing and possessing child pornography in connection with a scheme that spanned 14 months until June 2023.
The plea agreement noted that Quintana is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 70 years, according to federal guidelines. However, federal judges have full discretion when sentencing defendants and are not bound by any guidelines calculation. A date for sentencing has yet to be scheduled.
According to his guilty plea and other court documents:
Between April 2022 and June 2023, Quintana used social media apps including Snapchat and Instagram to threaten, sexually manipulate and exploit at least 65 girls primarily between 9 and 15 years old in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, New Zealand and elsewhere.
He knew their true ages and used fake identities — many with feminine first names such as "Queen Lee" — and lied about his age to the girls. He used images and videos to pose as a girl in order to make more believable his communications with his victims.
Quintana sometimes convinced girls that he was their friend or romantic partner, or he offered them money.
But most frequently, he persuaded girls to send him a sexual photo or video or covertly recorded them engaging in sexually explicit conduct and then threatened to send the first image to their friends and family unless the girls produced ever more graphic sexual images and videos for him.
He then shared some of the pornographic material with other people through the internet.
Quintana "admits some minor victims cried and begged him to stop, but he persisted in his scheme," his guilty plea filing read.
Prosecutors wrote in the plea document that they believe "there are many more as-yet identified minor victims of [Quintana's] scheme … depicted in child pornography images stored in the defendant's … cloud computing account and cellphone, and attempts to identify the are ongoing."